We jump right back into the swing of things, with an episode jammed packed with great advice for entrepreneurs. We invite Ross Simmonds back for his third episode as guest host to share his experience as an entrepreneur and offer advice for young professionals looking to follow that path. Ross is a communications and marketing strategist and entrepreneur. You might know him as @theCoolestCool on Twitter.

While reading an article in the International Association of Business Communicator’s magazine, Communication World, Kristine has noticed a trend in the millennial generation - more and more of her friends are option for the consultant root and gaining experience before getting permanent jobs. This new trend might stem from en employer’s need to see real experience on a young professional’s resume. For those of you jumping into the world of consulting, read and listen on.

We start with Ross, an entrepreneur himself, who had this to say about entrepreneurship:

It is the best thing for your career and will make your resume stand out.

Technology has made consulting easy - build a worldwide clientele.

Build up a reputation for yourself - build your brand through social media and blogging. You don’t need to be an expert, just be out there.

Julia Kent consulted for a year at the beginning of her career and said:

Companies nowadays - mostly non-profits and small businesses - don’t have big budgets and look for freelancers and consultants all the time.

Find work through networking, RFPs or job boards.

Listen to the full episode and then share your opinion.Are you an entrepreneur? How did you make the leap of faith?

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also connect with Young PR Pros through their blog our Facebook Page, or on our Google+ page, or send us an email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or send us a message on Twitter @youngprpros, @kristinedarbell, or @kentjulia. You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Friday, May 15, 2015

FIR Interview: Steven Green and Julian Mills on social intranets

Communicators struggle to build genuine online engagement among employees using the various social tools available for intranets. Study after study shows that few employees use these tools, regardless of how much they might be engaged with external social media. At Bank of Montreal, though, Julian Mills overcame the obstacles to introduce social tools employees at all levels used to advance business goals. In this interview, FIR co-host Shel Holtz talks with Mills about the impetus for the introduction of social channels, and with TemboSocial CEO Steven Green, who worked with Mills to introduce the internal social media tools that drove the interaction on the Bank of Montreal intranet.

Julian Mills is a management and business development executive with a focus on social media utilization, workplace productivity and marketing innovation. In his role as Head, Corporate Intranet and Social Media at BMO Financial Group, Julian leads that team that maintains BMO’s intranets as well as manages portal renewal and the greater utilization of social business tools for 46,000 employees. Prior to joining BMO, Julian was Vice President of Client Development at Prescient Digital Media, where he worked with Fortune 500 Companies to improve their business performance using employee portals and social business technology.

Steven Green founded TemboSocial Inc. back in 1999 to provide a polling application for marketing and communications departments. Today, TemboSocial offers a suite of social tools that drives intranet platform adoption and employee engagement for the worlds leading brands. In today’s competitive staffing environment, companies desire to retain their talent and make employees smarter about company business by introducing core business processes related to collaboration, innovation and recognition.

With an impressive roster of clients, such as Bank of Montreal, State Farm, Macy’s and The Cleveland Clinic, and with a reach of more than 1,000,000 employees every day, Steven continues to grow TemboSocial’s role in the modern workplace.

Steven has a BA from McGill University in Montreal and a Social Work degree from York University in Toronto.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Chip Griffin serves as CEO of CustomScoop, a media intelligence company he co-founded in 2000. CustomScoop provides a cloud-based subscription service that monitors, measures, and reports on traditional and social media coverage for Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, public relations agencies, and small-to-medium sized enterprises. For two decades, Chip has worked in the public relations arena, including service in public and private sector organizations. He has co-founded more than half a dozen companies, and he writes and speaks frequently about the intersection of technology, media, and communications. He is a graduate of American University where he is President of the Alumni Association and a member of the School of Public Affairs Advisory Council. Chip lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two sons.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

FIR on Higher Education #34 – Tips on Presenting and Public Speaking from Gini Dietrich

How can you secure speaking opportunities? What goes into a good presentation? If you are an academic / thought leader and recently wrote a book, how do you convert those 200 pages into a one-hour keynote?

Special guest Gini Dietrich delves into these questions on episode 34 of FIR on Higher Education. Along with being the mastermind of the popular PR blog called Spin Sucks and an author of two books, Gini is also a regular speaker.

Among what you will learn:

- how to handle negative comments / questions
- how to use slides effectively
- how to position a product or service in the course of a speaking engagement without coming across as an obnoxious salesperson
- best practice on preparing for your talk

This is an episode that you won’t want to miss and will want to revert back to when your different public speaking opportunities arise!

In our reports section, I highlight points made in a Harvard Business Review article by Ted Talks curator Chris Anderson on how to give a killer presentation, while technology correspondent Harry Hawk reviews the blogging feature that is part of Blackboard.

Previously, Kevin was Director of Public Relations for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and prior to that managed the media relations for IMD Business School in Switzerland. In addition, he was an adjunct communications professor at Nyack College in New York.

Currently based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Kevin lived and worked in Switzerland for eight years and in Germany for two years. He has led public relations initiatives in various countries around the world.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

FIR B2B #27: Josh Bernoff on Getting the BS Out of Business Communications

In this episode:

News & Trends

Twitter stock took a hit as the company announced
disappointing earnings and continues to struggle with increasing member
activity. Could Twitter become acquisition bait or, even worse, the walking
dead? It’s looking like a distinct possibility if this company doesn’t refocus
its efforts on creating a great user experience. It’s too beholden to Wall
Street right now.

Special Guest: Josh Bernoff

Josh Bernoff is well known to the community of social media
aficionados as co-author of the best-selling book Groundswell and a
highly visible Forrester Research analyst for many years. Last year he left
Forrester and struck out on his own, setting up a website called Without Bullshit that
attacks jargon, corporate doublespeak and vacuous communications. Having read
more than 10,000 press releases during his career, he has no shortage of
material and he appears to have hit a nerve. A recent post about 10
writing trips and the psychology behind them logged more than 100,000 page
views in a little more than three days. Josh believes the companies that
succeed will be those that are honest, forthright, original and personal in the
way they communicate.

Josh is working on a book about how to write without BS.
It’s a topic he’s passionate about, and that comes through in this interview.

About Your Hosts

Paul Gillin is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is the author or co-author of five books, including Social Marketing to the Business Customer (2011), the first book devoted entirely to B2B social media marketing. He is also a social media trainer and coach at Profitecture, a training firm for B2B companies and their channel partners.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or connect with him on Twitter: @pgillin

Eric Schwartzman
is a digital strategist with 15 years of experience selling and leading teams
on the agency side in the development and delivery of innovative integrated
marketing initiatives for multinational corporations, NGOs, federal government
agencies and military commands. He is a frequent speaker at conferences all
over the world on the topic of how technology is changing the way organizations
communicate and the way people use media and information.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

FIR Interview: Harry Hawk interviews Clammr co-founder Parviz Parvizi

In a recent post to her blog, longtime FIR contributor Donna Papacosta shared her first Clammr recording after learning about the app at New Media Expo in Las Vegas. While at the Expo, Donna heard Mark Ramsay say, “People don’t share audio. They share conversations about audio.” Later, she met Parviz Parvizi, which claims to be “the Instagram of audio,” allowing users to share snippets of sound. “This would be a boon for podcasters seeking to build their audiences,” Donna wrote.

Parviz is co-founder of Clammr, a mobile app and platform making audio more social and discoverable. Users are calling Clammr, which features bite-sized audio clips of 18 seconds or less, the “Instagram of Audio.”

Previously, Parviz worked at McKinsey & Company, Goldman Sachs, the FCC, and O’Melveny & Myers. He has advised top 5 global media companies and mobile carriers on strategy and growth. He was a founder of McKinsey’s iConsumer research initiative on digital consumer behavior, authoring 3 of the Firm’s 10 most-downloaded media sector knowledge documents. Parviz holds a JD from Yale Law School and AB from Cornell.

Harry Hawk talks with Parviz the core features of Clammr and its creation, and then dives deep into the importance of audio discovery. Parviz discusses a wide range of use cases that would be beneficial to professional communicators. At its core a Clammr is a metadata rich audio file that is bite size, shareable, embeddable, linkable and curratable. Because Clammrs can be collected and curated 3 to 10 Clammrs can convey a rich tapestry of voices, sounds, and messages; each one can link back to a full source, a PDF file, Etc. Parviz also talks about the audio editing and creation tools which allows users of Clammr to create their Clammr files, mash up existing ones or overlay audio on top of or along size of an existing Clammr.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Thought Leader Life with Mitchell Levy, Episode 67: April 11, 2015

Our co-host for the month of April is Chris Kenton (@ckenton) and one of our guests was Chris Becwar (@cbec100).

In this episode, Mitchell Levy and his co-host for the month of April, Chris Kenton, interview #ThoughtLeader Chris Becwar, Senior Director of Marketing & Product at CCI Global Channel Management. The conversation starts with the observation that Chris Becwar has been able to witness the dramatic change of the entire business over the last few years. What interests him most is the quest for answers on how it affects the business process and the marketing through indirect channels. He definitely is in the right position to share the changes that he has been able to witness working for a company that it happens to be the fundamental building block providing financial and program plumbing for automating in large vendor relationships with a massive network of resellers and partners. The company conducts surveys to find out the pain points of the vendors they’re providing their services with. One of his more interesting revelations is that there has been a number of questions about what the channel professional is struggling with today. What kind of overarching pain points are they really looking to overcome? He has been able to witness that the concerns they used to hear from their clients on day-to-day encounters are different from what they’ve heard in the past. One of the pain points that remains unchanged is the traditional core challenge of channel management that tends to prove on the Return of Investment (ROI), and how to identify who’s moving the needle the most and who is not. Assisting companies in their driving traction to arrive at a decision in which partner to invest used to involve so much risk, and past performance of the new prospect partner is not the sole indicator for predicting future performance. Companies need to adapt to change and be innovative.

One of the big factors of channel success today is having a deciding factor to try innovative methods to grow one’s business, not just being stuck on the traditions you’re used to. It is looking for ways to be able to engage in talking to experts who can understand the marketing personas with a level of intuition, empathy, and how you can clearly understand the pain points to create compelling value proposition. These experts don’t necessarily have to be in your organization. Mitchell shares his point of view of it being important to practice the need of thought leadership as you actively engage your employees in the process.

There has been innovative and new technologies out in the market, but one of the keys to the success factor of a business is its customer service, dedication, and expertise. How well do you manage your relationships with your customers even after they buy your products? Your business will definitely stand out, even surrounded with the new technologies of your competitors, as long as you know how to execute support and have long-term customer relationships.

Here are a couple of aha moments from the episode. See more in the “Aha Moments from Thought Leader Life” eBooks available in the social media-enabled eBook platform, Aha Amplifier: http://AhaAmplifier.com/ .

• The core challenge that channel management tends to prove is the Return of Investment (ROI). @CCIChannels #TLL
• From a business standpoint, it is smart for businesses to build their ecosystem where they have persistent customers. @ckenton #TLL
• What is your customer service’s dedication and expertise? @CCIChannels #TLL
• In the age of thought leadership, employees in the organization need to be actively engaged. @happyabout #TLL

This show is recorded as a Google+ Hangout on Air, watch it on YouTube

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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